¹⁷ As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives!^(A) Don’t look back,^(B) and don’t stop anywhere in the plain!^(C) Flee to the mountains^(D) or you will be swept away!”

¹⁸ But Lot said to them, “No, my lords,^[a] please! ¹⁹ Your^[b] servant has found favor in your^[c] eyes,^(E) and you^[d] have shown great kindness^(F) to me in sparing my life. But I can’t flee to the mountains;^(G) this disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die. ²⁰ Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it—it is very small, isn’t it? Then my life will be spared.”

²¹ He said to him, “Very well, I will grant this request^(H) too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of. ²² But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.” (That is why the town was called Zoar.^[e](I))

²³ By the time Lot reached Zoar,^(J) the sun had risen over the land. ²⁴ Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur^(K) on Sodom and Gomorrah^(L)—from the Lord out of the heavens.^{(M) 25} Thus he overthrew those cities^(N) and the entire plain,^(O) destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land.^{(P) 26} But Lot’s wife looked back,^(Q) and she became a pillar of salt.^(R)

²⁷ Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord.^{(S) 28} He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.^(T)

²⁹ So when God destroyed the cities of the plain,^(U) he remembered^(V) Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe^(W) that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.^(X)